Got Questions about Privacy on the Assembly Platform? Visit Our New Privacy Hub

10 October 2016

Privacy and data protection is a top priority for Assembly. We are fully aware of the sensitivity of the data you entrust us to store and to share at your will, and we don’t take this responsibility lightly. Our aim has always been to demystify the sometimes murky waters of data protection, and to make it as easy as possible for schools to make informed and responsible decisions about data sharing. We’ve taken this one step further with the launch of our new Privacy Hub.

How often do you click ‘I Agree’ without having a clue what you’re agreeing to? It’s one of the biggest lies on the internet - only 0.1% of us spend longer than a second looking at what we’re agreeing to. Actually trying to read and understand lengthy, legalistic, deliberately obscure documents isn’t easy. A study revealed that the average length of software contracts from 4 major sellers is 74,000 words. You could have read Hamlet two and a half times over in that time.

Let’s be honest: life is too short to read many of those contracts, and the stakes aren’t always that high. When it comes to student data, however, it’s an entirely different story. Student data is very sensitive, and schools have a responsibility as guardians of that data. At Assembly we want schools to fulfil these responsibilities, and to make well-informed decisions about who they wish to share their data with. And doing so certainly shouldn’t waste precious school time or require legal training to interpret.

The first step in achieving this is for us to be as open, honest and clear with schools about what using the Assembly platform entails at every stage. That means not being the provider of a document the length of the first Harry Potter but with far more confusing and sinister twists and turns. Our Terms of Service (the main document which governs how schools use the platform and, equally importantly, what we promise in return) is written as clearly, concisely and as free from legalese as possible. And it is under 4,000 words. We never fudge things we’re unclear or shy about, and we never deliberately omit anything.

However, the complexity of a multi-data source, multi-application, multi-organisation platform makes clarity something of a challenge! This is why we now have launched our Privacy Hub. Here are some of the key benefits:

The Privacy Hub is your one-stop shop for all things privacy and security. All information and documents are now housed in one place.

Our key data protection and security principles are summarised to give you a flavour of our commitment to data protection before you look into it in more detail.

Our new video explains the basics of data security and privacy on the Assembly platform in less than 2 minutes, including what data we extract and how exactly permissioning works. It also explains the most complicated part of the platform: the boundary between the Assembly platform and third party apps, and how we help you to be equally confident of their privacy and data protection policies as you are of ours.

We hope the Privacy Hub will make it easier and more intuitive to understand data protection and security on the Assembly platform. As always, we would welcome your feedback. Please email me at rachel@assembly.education if you wish to do so.